Having a bit of time on my hands, I am wading through the Great Reform Bill. I shall comment in due course. I rather liked this take on matters from Dr Cian Murphy of King’s College London – re-published in the UK Human Rights Blog… I quote….
It’s no Magna Carta. Those of us who teach public law in British universities will certainly have to grapple with the Protection of Freedoms Bill. But will it, like the that earlier constitutional text, echo through the centuries into the classrooms of 2311? I doubt it. Although the Bill’s 107 sections will give Messrs Cameron and Clegg a long list of reforms to rattle off at party conferences it does little to coherently explain the coalition’s view of the appropriate relationship between the state and the citizen. The Government does not know what freedom is, but it knows freedom isn’t having your car immobilised without lawful authority (see section 54).
Protection of Freedoms Bill ‘disappointing’, says Law Society
The Law Society Gazette...thunders….
The new Protection of Freedoms Bill fails to live up to government promises and instead hints at a ‘growth of the surveillance society’, the Law Society has warned.
The Society said the legislation, which the coalition claims will scale back on Labour’s ‘intrusive’ policies, will take power away from the public.
Law Society president Linda Lee said that while attempts to reduce the apparent erosion of civil liberties are commendable, it does not tackle the way CCTV is regulated.
‘The Bill as a whole fails to measure up to the government’s grand rhetoric. Proposals for CCTV regulation are limited to local authorities and the police,’ she said.
Doesn’t seem to be very fundamental. The State’s powers to confiscate property, whatever the property’s provenance, have not been curtailed.
Nor has the legislation and regulations relating to so called “Money Laundering” been reorientated so as to reduce the amount of wholly inappropriate financial surveillance that the populace is now subject to.
Britain is becoming a less free society and there is not much in this Bill to reverse the trend.
Give recent happenings in Parliament and the lack of respect for the rule of law amongst MPs I fear that the Bill will act as a fig leaf for greater authoritarianism.